- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
His appointment, pending Arizona Board of Regents’ approval, begins Dec. 5.
“As its chief academic officer, Page will provide leadership to all ASU campuses and academic programs, fostering global distinction in teaching, research and service to the community," according to an ASU press release. “Page will guide ASU’s mission to achieve its vision of the New American University by positioning the university at the national forefront of academic excellence and accessibility. Page also will represent ASU to external agencies and constituencies and engage in its fundraising initiatives.”
ASU President Michael M. Crow praised Page as “the perfect person to help move the university forward on the path set by Provost Phillips toward academic excellence and student-centric education. Since coming to ASU, he has embraced and embodied all of the qualities of the New American University. His own scholastic rigor combined with his leadership in transcending disciplinary divides to further knowledge, research and educational reform that impact the public good makes him ideally suited to direct our academic aspirations.”
Page, who studies the evolution of complex social behavior in honey bees, from genes to societies, received his doctorate in entomology from UC Davis in 1980, and served as an assistant professor at Ohio State University before joining the UC Davis Department of Entomology in 1989. He chaired the department for five years, from 1999 to 2004 when ASU recruited him as the founding director and dean of the School of Life Sciences, an academic unit within CLAS. He organized three departments—biology, microbiology and botany, totaling more than 600 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff--into one unified school.
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost honey bee geneticists, Page is a highly cited entomologist who has authored more than 230 research papers and articles centered on Africanized bees, genetics and evolution of social organization, sex determination and division of labor in insect societies. His work on the self-organizing regulatory networks of honey bees is featured in his new book, The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution, published in June 2013 by Harvard University Press.
Page continues to keep bees at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, UC Davis; they are managed by staff research associate/beekeeper Michael “Kim” Fondrk.
As vice provost and dean of CLAS, beginning in July 2011, Page was responsible for student academic affairs, faculty development and research promotion, as well as planning and implementation of degree programs for a college with an enrollment of more than 20,000 students. He also has overseen budgeting, planning, fundraising and personnel decisions.
“For nearly a decade, I have been energized and inspired by President Crow’s vision for transforming ASU,” said Page in the ASU news release. “Today’s modern universities must become agents of change, capable of profoundly impacting our quality of life by developing students into socially aware, critically thinking citizens. As university provost, I look forward to continuing the work of Provost Phillips in helping shape the metamorphosis of this great university.”
As founding director of SOLS, Page established the school as a platform for discovery in the biomedical, genomic, and evolutionary and environmental sciences. He also founded the Social Insect Research Group and ASU Honey Bee Research Facility, which have attracted top researchers in social insect studies to the university.
An internationally recognized scholar, Page was elected to the Leopoldina-the German National Academy of Sciences, the longest continuing academy in the world. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Entomological Society of America, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Wiko), or Institute for Advanced Study. His awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists.
“The University Senate welcomes the opportunity to work with Dr. Robert Page as the new provost of the university,” said Thomas Schildgen, president of the University Senate in the ASU news release. “The senate recognizes his exemplary record of scholarship and publication, his distinguished international research work, along with his successful administrative experience as the key factors that define his ability to advance Arizona State University. The University Senate represents shared faculty governance and will work with Provost Page to advance the mission of the institution.”
(Michael Crow of Arizona State University contributed to this news release.)